


Mr. Houstons fourth period class.

by CoffeeBrooke



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid
Genre: I got two weeks off might aswell make a series..?, Smoke club girl is named Sofia, mentions of mouthface, probably gonna keep adding tags as i go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23165326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeBrooke/pseuds/CoffeeBrooke
Summary: Mr. Houston has a great fourth period class.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	1. Cigarettes don't listen to your problems

Tom knew she wasn’t a bad person.

She was one of the nicest kids in school, and had decently good grades most of the time, and never really got into trouble.

The thing was, she came to school high on something every other day.

She usually sat with Lex and Ethan for projects so they made sure she didn’t cut her finger off with her clouded sense of judgement.

Someone was going to cut their finger off regardless, but that wasn’t anything new.

Tom waited until fourth period was over and everyone had exited the class, except one person, sitting in the back, staring into space as if she hadn’t heard the bell ring at all.

He made his way over to her and sat on a small stool in front of the wooden table.

“Sofia, you can’t participate in my class when you’re always high you know? I kind of need you to be capable of sensing when you’ve basically set the wood and the band saw on fire.”

She turned to him, blinking twice as if she just heard him sit down.

“...Huh?”

He sighed, but tried his best with his patience and scooted closer.

“This obviously isn’t healthy for you, do your parents know? I feel like they wouldn’t agree.”

She nodded slowly, shrugging.

“Well they aren’t really home often, so they don’t notice.”

He propped his arm on the table, giving her a nod of understanding.

“I don’t want to bother anyone anyway.”

He stared at her, trying to figure out what she was saying and how much she meant of it. It was more unusual for her to come to school smoking between every other period rather than every other time the smoke club had their meet-ups. Lex and Ethan never mentioned the club, but he was aware they were also there with Sofia, and if they were there they could probably agree something was off.

“You won’t be bothering me if you need anything Sof. I’ll be here to listen.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does. Either way it’s not like your smoking habit is making anything better.”

She slumped in her seat, shutting her eyes for a second and groaned. 

“Well, I’m already late and wasting your time as well as mine so…”

“You can stay here, I don’t mind really. I’ll just tell your teacher you weren’t feeling well.”

She mouthed a thanks as she laid back as Tom retreated to his desk and worked on the lesson plans on his computer. After a couple of minutes of comfortable silence she raised her head from the table.

“Can I talk to you about something?”

Sofia did come to school the next few days without cigarettes, and stopped by his classroom afterwards just to ramble about small things to him. The bell rang as she was leaning on his desk talking about her day when she started to trail off slightly.

“...Which is too bad. I know this is probably a stupid thing to have to hear about, sorry.”

She shrugged as her sentence was left at that, and she averted her gaze.

“Honestly Sof, you don’t have to worry your problems are insignificant or unimportant, I don’t mind and I’m glad you come to me to talk.”

She smiled a little from the reassurance, as the late bell rang and she swung her backpack over her shoulders.

“Thanks Mr. Houston, you’re my favorite teacher.”


	2. Letting Lex leave class

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are just some people you don't give hall passes to.

Tom learned one thing after his time as a shop class teacher, but mainly a teacher as a whole.

There are some people you just don’t give hall passes to. 

And Lex foster, is one of those people. She was usually a very competent person in shop class, and never was really that out of line either. But something in her mind seemed to trip whenever she’s allowed out of the door.

And yet for some reason it took Tom a while to admit that every time he did, it was going to be a new problem.

Tom had been at the front of the classroom, explaining the directions for their latest project. He allowed them to start pulling up the directions and he pointed to Lex’s table.

“Lex, Deb, can you please print out the paper copies of the directions?”

Lex and Deb nodded and headed out to the printer room, leaving the class for not too long. So he figured when they came back, they’d come back with around 10-20 papers.

They came back, but with at least a hundred papers in both of their hands, leaving trails behind them as Lex dropped them on Toms desk with a loud thud.

“Here you go Mr. Houston!” Deb said proudly.

The class around them had started to snicker as Tom could only stare. His first question could’ve been how they changed the settings, or how much ink was even left in the printer, or even how they got that much in a minute or two. His response only came out as a much more simpler question though.

“....Why?”

A day or so after that incident, he apparently hadn’t learned or he was in a good mood that day, because he allowed Lex a hall pass to retrieve something from her locker.

He began to worry when Lex hadn’t been back in 5 minutes, being reminded by Sofia that she was waiting for a turn with the hall pass as well.

He got a call from the nurse’s office a minute or two later that Lex had fallen down the stairs. And she lost the hall pass.

After school she stopped by with a sheepish grin squishing a mostly melted ice pack in one hand and holding the hall pass in the other.

“I can explain, so I was going to my locker but-”

“I can already tell where this is going, goodbye.”

And most recently, Tom was apparently so forgetful that day he also forgot his one rule he was thinking of implementing. Don’t let Lex leave the room. 

“Lex,” Tom said while opening desk drawers and shuffling through the papers for the lesson plans, “Can you go get a 100 ml beaker from a science teacher, I don’t know where mine went.”

She nodded and skipped out the room, not to return for the next few minutes after he started explaining the testing portion of the project. Lex did come back relatively fast, except she was holding broken glass pieces when she arrived, putting them on the table gingerly. 

“I didn’t want to go back to Ms. Knightly’s class.” 

Tom didn’t find it as amusing as she did, or the rest of the class trying not to laugh at her.

“Really Lex. You can’t just pick up glass, you could get cut-”

She held up her hand to show three small cuts already on her palm. When he just opted for a brief 30 second explanation to the class instead of a demonstration he grabbed rubbing alcohol and band-aids from a small cabinet.

“And the moral you’ve learned from this is?” He asked as she winced slightly.

“Not everything has a moral, I don’t have one either.”

Needless to say that was the last time so far he allowed Lex to leave the classroom. So far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, yes this is the majority of my tech ed/shop class experiences.
> 
> (Yes, it was our group that broke the 100 ml beaker.)


	3. The almost accidents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can never be too cautious in a room filled with machines that can tear limbs and of course, teenagers.

Sometimes you can just simply never be too careful when you’re in a room filled with bad-decision-makers and a room filled with machines that can lead to a lot of blood loss.

He knew from his first few years of teaching that there will always be that one class that will get hurt, badly. So he usually spent half of the first quarter making sure they practically memorized and pledged to every safety measure, just so nobody lost their limbs again.

Tom had spent the past couple minutes walking around the room and making small corrections and suggestions when he heard the whirr of a cutting machine and a shriek from Alice.

It didn’t take him long to get to her, immediately checking for any sign of blood.

“What happened, did it cut you?”

She gave him an apologetic grin, taking a small step back from the table.

“Um, no, but it did scare me.”

He did help her figure out how to work it, but didn’t leave until she could successfully cut through the wood by herself. The rest of the class went smoothly after that to his relief. 

The next class however they were working with glue guns and pliers. Each table had them as well as a set of popsicle sticks. A lot of tables had gone for houses, Deb’s table was building a popsicle stick boat, and Ethan and Lex seemed to be building a little table so far.

Though a minute after Tom sat down on his desk, quite a few people jumped at the sound of Ethan’s shout and him smacking something on the table.

Tom stopped by their workspace, already having theories of what happened, most of them concluding to possibly the glue gun, but even if it was, Lex had basically fallen out of her chair laughing.

“Ethan, what happened.”

“In my defense that bug was ugly.”

Some of the other tables have started laughing along with Lex, but Tom didn’t really find it amusing that Ethan had nearly broken a set of pliers to kill a beetle. It was confiscated from them in the end.

The class was given drills that day for their project, and Tom was almost more on edge with them than he was when they were using their usual machines. It also didn’t help when Lex asked,

“Mr. Houston, can I have a hall pass?”

He continued writing down the steps on the white board when he responded with the question, 

“What for?”

“I’m just going to the bathroom.”

He was finishing the written part of the directions up at this point, when he cast her a brief glance.

“Well, I’m going to go over the next directions, can you wait?”

“Well, I’m bleeding to death but okay I guess.”

He whipped around but he didn’t find any literal bleeding to death immediately. She pointed to Ethan's flannel around her waist and he only muttered a small ‘oh’ and gave her the hall pass.

And despite all of this, he somehow hadn’t applied as much of the rules as well as precautions to himself. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he basically slammed a hammer onto his hand. 

Everyone’s first initial reaction to this was of course laugh, but they had basically memorized the cabinets with the ice packs and other health products. In the end he found it funny too, due to the irony. But he did make sure to be careful in a room full of deadly machines, bad-decision-makers and an occasionally accident prone teacher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can tell these chapters are kinda like, "three times this happened. It's not much but it's odd it happened three times."
> 
> This was inspired from all the safety quizzes and stuff you need to wear to do things like use a glue gun or be in the same room as a drill press lol.
> 
> (It's 10:52, I really wanted to finish this mk)


	4. Cause their frog's MIA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missing in action,   
> Ribbits by subtraction

It was a normal research day for Mr. Houston’s fourth period class. 

If only that was a sentence Tom ever got to say. It was the second day of the research part of the design process, and he couldn’t pinpoint when it happened, but everyone was crowding a student, (He believed it was the girl who wore her hair in two braids and wore a lot of light blue.) 

She was proudly showing everyone a frog, and while some people were scared and grossed out, most of them were still eyeing the large green blob sitting on both of her hands.

“I found it!”

Everyone “oooed” as she held it up a little higher, and even let Alice hold it, which she proceeded to give Deb a close up.

“It’s so cute Deb, right?”

Deb nodded and took a turn holding the frog, and soon almost everyone had gotten to hold it. 

The girl stretched her arms out and tried to give it to Tom, who was also trying to get everyone to sit.

“Here Mr. Houston, touch Freckle.”   
He jumped back a little motioning for her to take a seat.

“I’m not touching your frog, take it back outside and sit down.” 

She frowned a little, retracting her arms, but Freckle apparently had a different idea. He leaped towards Tom, and trust and believe he had never screamed that loud in the classroom since a guy tipped over his drill press 2 years prior. 

Although he dodged the frog, it seemed to vanish into thin air and soon everyone was on their knees, (Or on the desks if they didn’t like the idea of Freckle popping up at them)

But to no avail. They all settled for starting to resume their research project until he popped up.

Minutes ticked by, and as focused as some were, everyone was seemingly aware of the chance a frog could stop by. 

Some cast occasional nervous glances around the room, although they saw nothing, others kept alert for a frog in a closer proximity, by checking around their desks.

But they didn’t even hear Freckle, as dead silent and tense the classroom was.

Tom sat down after checking the perimeter a final time, knowing he might have to spend a whole school day and possibly more knowing a frog was hiding somewhere, and sat down and grabbed his mouse.

Only his mouse shouldn’t have been green.

He jumped up and practically shrieked, as freckles bounded off the desk and to the blue dress girl. 

Everyone was laughing until the bell rang, but Tom absolutely didn’t find it funny.

He did pet the frog though as they left through the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mouthface. Mouthface brought freckle.


	5. Field trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom chaperones a group for a field trip.

Mr. Houston happily agreed to help chaperone for the field trip to the aquarium. 

He usually volunteered to sit with the kids who weren’t going, because for starters he didn’t need the chaos, and usually the people who didn’t have signed permission slips were the students that liked him the most, so he offered to stay. 

But this year he managed to get everyone in his classes a signature. (Hopefully in some legal ways.) It was a grueling feat, but in the end it did work out.

So it was the morning of the field trip and nobody in the school could sit down in one place. His own homeroom was running around the room talking excitedly while he tried to get attendance.

So he didn’t notice Ethan looking over his shoulder as he finished. So he jumped at the sound of him talking. 

“Hey Mr. Houston.”

He turned around, maneuvering around the desk and other things on the floor. 

“Well hello to you too Ethan, but shouldn’t you be in your homeroom?”

“Well, yes,” Ethan replied, “But I lost my permission slip.”

Tom could not have given him a more exasperated look. Until he held up his hand, grinning.

“I’m just kidding. You never really go on these field trips huh.” 

Tom sighed, making sure he got back to his own homeroom before dismissal. 

Everyone was lining up into the busses, and Tom slipped over to the second bus, sitting on the first row. Lex sat in a row behind him, which he figured would be nice to have a student from his 4th period with him.

But he soon realized the error in his mistake, because although these were the good busses, no amount of comfy chairs and little TV’s could drown out Ms. Twenty questions behind him. 

“So how long is it gonna be?”

“Where are we going again?”

“Where’s Ethan?”

“Are we gonna eat?”

“Am I allowed to stand on the bus?”

“Did she bring Freckle?”

Yep, Tom did regret his seating choices that entire ride. But he was somewhat happy in the fact Lex was excited, since she was usually in the shop class with him during field trips.

Finally, after a seemingly endless ride, He was able to take his group inside the aquarium. 

There were a lot of fish tanks and bridges over some of them. They were looking over a bridge with a pool of water, corral and a large turtle swimming underneath. 

Unfortunately, Alice dropped her camera in the water, causing everyone to either stare in horror or laugh. But it wasn’t funny to Alice, as she was panicking and trying to grab her dad’s camera back from the water.

The turtle also seemed to like it though, since it took it away peacefully. After a good moment of chaos a worker managed to give the basically drowned camera back to Alice, and they trudged on.

Tom’s group ventured into a dark room, where everyone marveled at the size of the tanks. 

The thing was, there was really nothing in it besides the occasional fish swimming by. Some of them tried to tap the glass to get more fishes’ attention, but that didn’t seem to work out very well. So before Tom could stop them, Ethan banged on the glass harshly.

Well apparently the shark in the tank didn’t appreciate that very much now did he.

So when THAT popped up in the glass, they definitely didn’t want to stick around very much longer. So Tom led them out. They had fun in the jellyfish exhibit, they stopped a lot to see the tiny jellyfish swimming around aimlessly. Deb said they looked adorable, but Lex looked a little more freaked out by the little pulsing blobs.

That went smoothly, so they kept going around the smaller exhibits. Apparently though, he didn’t realize it when his group was getting smaller too. 

“Where’s Freckle?” Deb asked the girl beside her, who had been carrying Freckle around.

She shrugged, and another guy with glasses asked, “Where’s Ethan?”

Tom started to worry, and it didn’t help when someone else in pigtails asked “Where’s Danny?”

So they go out on a search for their missing group members, and manage to lose Lex and Alice in the process. 

But on the bright side, they found Freckle. So they somehow found themselves by the food court, where everyone missing somehow decided to meet up at.

Their time at the aquarium was almost over, so they decided to see the dolphin show exhibit, and they sat in the front row seats.

Well, they would’ve sat in the very back of the seats if they had read the small “splash zone” warning on the chairs.

Unfortunately they did not come out of the exhibit dry, but they had been able to film the dolphins performing tricks and swimming around the tanks.

As they were driving back to school, Lex asked him the first of what he knew many questions would soon follow.

“Are you going on another field trip next time?”

He paused for a moment, before turning to her and looking at her dead in the eye.

“Absolutely.”

He had thought about it, since the field trip had been pretty...Eventful. But, so was his fourth period class. And that kept him motivated to do a lot of things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Cough, based on true events.)
> 
> Yes I'm here because I'm having school withdrawal. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed. :D


	6. Letting Lex leave class; the sequel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hah, you thought Lex was done setting stuff on fire while promising she's just going to the bathroom? You thought.

Lex had been gone for five minutes.

Tom had realized his mistake the second he gave her the hall pass. Five minutes had passed and Lex Foster was gone-in-action. 

He continued to help the class with their research, but it was hard to focus with the knowledge one of your students is currently either blowing the school or themselves up with explosives.

He was basically ready to call 911 by the time Lex had come back into the room. She quietly sat back down and started up her laptop. If she wasn’t smirking ever so slightly he would’ve assumed everything was fine and he was just overthinking.

Until another teacher opened the door about 10 minutes after, and pointed at her.  
“Lex Foster! If you think jamming all of the printers in the school is funny then go to the office and see if they will laugh!”

Everyone obviously burst out laughing, and Lex went to the office grinning at Mr. Houston.

So of course he let her leave the room again.

He was asked by Ethan to leave the room to find one of his jackets, and Lex offered to help. So when Tom thought about it, he figured Ethan could help Lex’s moral compass stay intact.

Tom’s wishful thinking must’ve gotten stronger, since they came back with a bucket of popcorn and some donuts. He could’ve asked if they had left the building, or how it took them less than 15 minutes to go and come back. But he decided that as long as no damage was done he wouldn’t question it. He did get some popcorn though, which was nice. And he didn't feel the effects of poison later, which was also nice.

He had been pretty good about not letting Lex leave the room, until Deb asked if she could leave the room and bring a friend. He said yes, but his face fell when she took Lex out with her. He decided to pray for the best and hope they’d just jam a printer again.

They came back fairly quickly, but they had a lighter in hand. And before he was able to question, Lex took their project and held it up for Deb to try and light. Tom was able to stop them in time, but they automatically had a couple points taken off for almost committing arson in his classroom.

Needless to say he prayed that was the last time Lex was able to leave class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be paranoid tom. Be paranoid.
> 
> The second mini story of the chapter was originally gonna imply something a little less pg so I was like *Heheheh nevermind*
> 
> Imagine if this short thing became a running gag for the chapters. Jk. Unless...

**Author's Note:**

> So true story in tech ed/shop class you can smell burning things, because we be irresponsible
> 
> Also yes, this is just me in Sofia form
> 
> Am I an expert at plot, absolutely....Not!


End file.
